DOE to expand existing Nevada Test Site

Thursday, Dec. 16, 1999 | 11:53 a.m.

The Department of Energy has been given control over an extra 200 square miles of Department of Defense land that lies on the border of the Nevada Test Site and the Nellis Air Force Bombing Range in Nye County as part of the Test Site's efforts to monitor ground water contamination in the area.

Legislation approving the transfer was signed by President Clinton in October, but the agencies needed time to work out the specific boundaries of the land switch.

The Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was the federal government's nuclear weapons experimental field from 1951 to 1992.

The area at the northwest corner of the Test Site on the Pahute Mesa was one of the most active sites for testing nuclear weapons. The biggest underground nuclear explosions were set off on the mesa.

Since the end of nuclear testing at the site, the DOE has been charged with tracking and, if possible, cleaning the contamination left behind.

The Test Site increased from 1,378 square miles to 1,573 square miles -- or from 882,332 acres to more than 1 million.

The agreement will allow the DOE scientific team to have complete access to the Mesa, DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said.

In 1997 DOE scientists discovered plutonium and other radioactive elements in tiny soil particles in two wells drilled on the mesa. It was the first time such contaminated particles other than tritium had been found almost a mile from a nuclear weapons experiment.

Radioactive contamination from underground nuclear weapons testing has never been found.

In February the DOE began drilling the first of eight wells designed to gather information on radioactive contamination moving in ground water that flows west and south from the Test Site.

More than 1,000 nuclear warheads were detonated there during the Cold War.